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You Won’t Have to Fight Alone! CISPES' Solidarity Statement After Election of Trump.

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Following November's election, CISPES shared a statement of solidarity (below) with our partners in El Salvador: the labor unions, feminist groups, environmental defenders, community organizations and FMLN party members who continue to advance their vision for social and economic justice every day. We needed to tell them: you won’t have to fight alone.

Trump's election has ushered in escalated threats to the physical safety and emotional well-being of millions of people in our country, especially for immigrants and their families, Muslim and Jewish people, black, brown, Latinx and Asian people, and queer and trans folks. As CISPES chapters across the country join together with others to develop community safety plans, we’ve also been responding to the call for solidarity from our allies in El Salvador as they face of new and unknown challenges.

Over the past several weeks, the government of El Salvador has been reaching out to Salvadoran immigrants across the US to convey its strong commitment to guarantee that their rights will be respected. But their ability to do that also rests with our willingness and ability to resist Trump's attempts to speed up the deportation and private prison machine.

Besides his Draconian immigration proposals, Trump’s election also brings an urgent question for the government of El Salvador, one of the few leftist governments remaining in the region today: What will a Trump State Department mean for relations between the two countries?

We didn’t hear much from Trump on the campaign trail about Central America or Latin America as a region, for that matter. But one sign of what's on the horizon is the news that Charles Glazer, former US Ambassador the El Salvador under Bush and Republican Party financier, is helping to lead the State Department transition team. At CISPES, we remember Glazer for his staunch support for the repressive ARENA government, including when police violently attacked community members protesting water privatization in Suchitoto and applied the freshly-inked anti-terrorism law the US had helped to draft.

As we've learned from our partners in El Salvador, a successful strategy requires a clear analysis of the current conditions and the balance of forces. We're undergoing that process now in order to fulfill the commitments we've made below. We hope you'll join us for the hard work ahead.¡La lucha sigue!

CISPES' Solidarity Statement

On November 9th, 2016, the world awoke to the news that Donald Trump would become the next President of the United States and that the Republican Party would hold a majority in both chambers of the US Congress.

As a candidate, Trump appealed to the most racist, xenophobic, and misogynist tendencies in US society to build his base of support; in the weeks following his election, he has named some of the most reactionary figures of the extreme right to head his cabinet.

In response to this new political context, CISPES commits to:

1. Accompanying the Salvadoran and immigrant communities in the US in their efforts to organize and defend their communities from the attacks, raids, and massive deportations that Trump has promised to carry out and to continue to support them in their heroic effort to pass immigration reform legislation that would recognize and respect the human right to migrate.

2. Maintaining our solidarity with El Salvador’s popular social movement and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), accompanying them in their struggle for social and economic justice and for the self-determination of the Salvadoran people.

3. Continuing to organize within the United States to fight against the US government’s political, economic, and military intervention in El Salvador, especially: border militarization and other anti-immigrant policies being promoted in Central America; the imposition of neoliberal policies that put corporate interests over the well-being of people; and the expansion of a militarized public security model and political interventions that seek to undermine democratic institutions and popular will.

4. Working alongside with other US social movement organizations to strengthen and be part of a mass movement to resist racism, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, ableism, and Trump’s neo-fascist agenda and to continue to work towards the transformation of our society.

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"I am a CISPES supporter because continuing to fight for social justice and a more people-centered country means continuing the dream and sacrifice of thousands of my fellow Salvadorans who died for that vision.” - Padre Carlos, New York City